Worms Armageddon

DEVELOPER : Team17
PUBLISHER : MicroProse/Hasbro

 

System Requirements Pen. 100, 32 RAM

Recommended Pen. 166MHz, 64 MB of RAM, 17' Monitor

Summary
Pros: Easy to jump right into, yet incredibly addictive and fun. Attractive graphics, sound, and interface. Cons: Some people may be put off by the "cuteness" of the game. Other than that, this game has it all.
Graphics – 7 Audio – 7 Interface – 9 Stability – 10 Overall: 9.1	Solo Play – 9 Replay Value – 9 Multiplay – 9 Manual/Documentation – 7 Installation Size – 7 Learning Curve - 9

Pump up your shotgun, fire up the flame-thrower and take the explosive sheep out of the barn! You heard right, we’re going to war…Worms style. And this strategy gamer can tell you that war has never been so much fun! Of course you know I’m referring to Microprose and Team 17’s newest creation in their Worms series of games, appropriately titled Worms Armageddon. Now, before you read on, let me inform you that I have never played its predecessors Worms and Worms 2. After playing WA (Worms Armageddon) endlessly, however, I wish I had jumped on the bandwagon a little sooner. I do remember a similar game that I played years ago on one of those 100 games in one CD (shareware games, that is, 85% of them not worth the electricity spent burning them onto a disc). Anyhow, the game involved a slab of destroyable terrain and two tanks, one on either side of the screen, taking turns firing a shell at one another. Wind and gravity spiced up the offering, threatening to throw your shot off course and give the other player another chance at returning the favor. I played this game endlessly, intrigued by the different style of gameplay. So when I discovered that WA is the same type of game, I almost went right through the monitor.

Gameplay is simple, to say the least, yet full of possibilities. You start with a team of worms that you can personalize to your liking. Name them, choose their country and anthem, select which grave marker pops up when they die, and even choose their voices. There is an enormous amount of voice types to choose from, ranging from Jock to Australian to, no joke, Stiff Upper Lip. You then choose what mode of play you are in the mood for. There is a mission mode, which sends your team of worms out on various tasks, but an annoying feature is that you have to complete Basic Training before accessing them. Training is composed of a series of "obstacle" courses that require you to hit targets with various weapons. The problem? If you get close to the end and lose a round you have to start over, which can get frustrating. This part of the game did not intrigue me all that much. What tickled my fancy was generating, or creating with a nifty little tool kit, terrain and battling the computer or my friends. This is what gives Worms Armageddon its sheer excellence, and what makes every penny spent on the price of admission well worth it…the replayability. Every time I play a new strategy game I always look out for the replay value. In my eyes that is what can turn a game from excellent to classic status. Worms Armageddon is definitely a classic.

While the core of the gameplay is similar to the tank game I described above, the fun comes from the sheer amount of weapons. Need to hit a pesky worm across the map? Use the homing missile, or even call in an air strike. If the fight gets up close and personal you can use your Uzi, shotgun, bow and arrow, dragon punch, or, if desperate, blow up your worm in a suicidal attack that will send nearby enemies halfway across the map. Adding to the strategic element is the movement of your worms. You can teleport across the map, use a jetpack, or even scale walls with your ninja rope. The super weapons are also superb, and had me cracking up with destructive glee. Deadly old women, exploding sheep, a nasty skunk, and last but not least, the mother of all weapons…the Holy Hand Grenade. Drop this baby on an enemy and hightail it out of there, then listen to a short Gregorian chant before it goes off in an immense explosion. As you can tell, great fun.

The artificial intelligence is quite good, and adds to the game’s lasting appeal. They’ll use their weapons competently, and have excellent aim with bazookas and hand grenades. They will occasionally do something stupid, but be thankful they are giving you a chance to get a good shot, because next turn they will be sending a missile across the map and right into your broadside. The real fun, however, is playing other people. Worms includes all the standard multiplayer functions, including Internet play, but what I found to be the most fun was playing a friend on the same computer. Words cannot describe the fun of blowing up your friend’s last worm with a well placed mortar, and then laughing at him as his/her mouth drops to the floor in amazement at how well your aim was.

OK, so I have established that WA has great gameplay, replayability, and personality, but is she a looker? Definitely. WA’s graphics are perfectly cartoonish, colorful, and extremely sharp and polished. The worms are probably the cutest characters I have seen in a game. Every action has a great animation to go along with it, too. Napalm strikes sends sizzling liquid raining down that not only hurts worms, but also burns through the map, and small bubbles rise from a worm’s screaming mouth as he descends into the water pit at the bottom of the terrain. While the terrain is just a static "obstacle" that you have to maneuver and fire around, the designers have made sure that you will not get tired of looking at it. They do this by including terrain sets ranging from a giant pile of treasure to stacks of automobiles.

As much as I loved the game, it can get tiring after extended play. But it is the type of game that, even if you stop playing for a while, will always be in the back of your mind, calling you for just one more round. At that point you will find yourself playing again for a quick fix or maybe even becoming addicted all over again. Also, from what I hear around the newsgroups and various webpages, WA has enough new features that make it worthwhile for veterans of the series to buy. Either way, you can’t go wrong picking up Worms Armageddon. 

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Reviewed by Anthony Micari